


Uranium Heart

by spqr



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Porn, Identity Reveal, M/M, Peter Parker Gets a Hug, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Protective Tony Stark, Sex Pollen, peter is 20, soul marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-12 15:10:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19134583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spqr/pseuds/spqr
Summary: It’s probably better, Peter thinks, that he doesn’t know who his soulmate is. He wouldn’t want to lie to them about Spider-Man, but he doesn’t think he’d be able to tell them the truth, either. Not when he knows it would make them a target for every villain who wants a piece of him.When he has enough free time to feel sorry for himself, he thinks about how lonely he is and how much he wants someone to talk to--just talk to. But he doesn’t really have that much free time. And anyways, there are thousands of lonely people in New York. Peter’s nothing special.





	Uranium Heart

The morning after his 40th birthday, Tony wakes up to the pain of a knife in his gut.

 

He lurches into a sitting position, half-curled on his side. His fingers probe his stomach, but there’s no blood, no knife. He’s alone in his bedroom in the tower, the sun is rising over the New York skyline outside his panoramic window, and his soulmate just got stabbed. Tony pulls up his t-shirt--sure enough, there’s a dark black slashmark just under his last rib. He runs his fingers over it, feeling sick, and clears his throat. “Friday--”

 

With a piercing pain, three more slashmarks hit him in the side. And then one in the chest. He jerks back against the headboard, hand flying to the last one, heart beating a mile a minute.

 

Five stab wounds.

 

Tony can’t--he feels like all the blood in his body has turned to ice. People don’t survive five stab wounds. Those are words you read in obituaries, “five stab wounds,” not--those words don’t crop up in hopeful human interest pieces about miraculous recoveries. Tony’s never been able to find his soulmate, he can’t...he can’t find them when they’re already _dead_. He can’t. It’ll kill him.

 

“Friday,” he says, voice raspy and painful. “You with me?”

 

“ _Affirmative, boss. The time is 5:15 A.M. It is May 30th, 2019--”_

 

“Stop. I’m not having a panic attack, Fry.”

 

“ _I beg to differ.Your heart rate is elevated and you’re hyperventilating--“_

 

“Stop it,” Tony lurches out of bed, unsteady on his feet. “I need you to monitor 911 calls, now. For the whole country, but focus on New York. Anything with multiple stab wounds--five, five stab wounds. Watch the hospitals, too. Anyone admitted with the same injuries. Four in the gut, one in the chest.” He pauses, the last command stuck in his throat. He doesn’t want to say it, but...at the same time, he has to know. “Check the morgues too, Fry.”

 

 _“On it, boss.”_ She sounds softer now, somehow. “ _Do you want me to call someone for you?”_

 

“No.”

 

“ _Agent Romanoff is in the kitchen.”_

 

Tony pauses, leaning heavily on the doorframe to the en suite. His insides feel like someone’s been stirring them with a wooden spoon, and his brain is reeling like it just got out of a salad spinner. Used to be, he’d drown this feeling in alcohol, but he’s gotten better about that, lately, and he doesn’t want to be drunk off his ass if-- _when--_ Friday finds something. This could be it, the first identifiable injury his soulmate has had. In an hour he could be sitting at their bedside, paying to move them to a private wing of the hospital, watching them wake up.

 

Or...or, he could be standing in the morgue, seeing their face for the first time after the light has already gone out of their eyes. Either way, he thinks he should be lucid.

 

“Okay,” he tells his A.I. “I’ll go talk to her. Hold her for me, alright?”

 

_“Sure thing, boss.”_

 

He lingers around the toilet until he’s sure he’s not going to be sick, then splashes some water on his face and stares at himself in the mirror and tries not to think about what’s going to happen if there’s no one to call 911. Tries not to think about the fact that someone just tried to murder his soulmate. After all, stab wounds don’t happen by accident--and certainly not that many of them. The idea makes him so angry his blood boils, and he wishes--not for the first time--that the incontinent fury had somewhere to go, someone to protect.

 

Natasha’s waiting at the kitchen counter when he staggers out, face still wet. She slides him a cup of coffee, wisely refrains from offering him any of the granola she’s eating, and doesn’t say anything.

 

Tony sits down, holds the coffee but doesn’t drink it. Natasha puts her spoon down, watching him carefully. He meets her eyes, pulls his t-shirt up and shows her his torso, covered in black marks.

 

Her eyes don’t quite turn kind, but they’re...understanding, at least. She takes his hand and squeezes a smidge too hard to be comfortable. “When I was nine,” she says, voice soft but still overloud in the quiet of the morning, “I woke up with a black dot in the middle of my forehead. A bullet hole.”

 

Tony’s stomach crawls into his throat. “That’s not what this is,” he manages.

 

Natasha doesn’t look like she believes him.

 

∞

 

Tony doesn’t feel anything from his soulmate until he’s 21, which either means they’re living in a padded room or he’s a lot older than them. His money’s on the second option.

 

It’s normal stuff, for a decade or so. Bumps and bruises, the occasional cut like they got a little too enthusastic with a pair of scissors, paper cuts that show up so faint he can barely see them, jammed thumbs, stubbed toes, and a broken arm, once. When he’s 34 he finds two tiny black dots on the inside of his wrist, and spends a good half hour panicking that he’s going to start finding needle marks everywhere until he figures out it’s a spider bite.

 

After that, the bruises get more frequent, more extensive. Sometimes it’s hard to pick out which ones are Tony’s and which ones are his soulmate’s, sometimes Tony’s body aches so much after a fight the new mottled black marks don’t even wake him up, and when he finds them in the shower in the morning his hands shake and he...he considers, so many times, taking the straight razor out of his shaving kit and carving _who are you?_ into his skin, just so he can _help_ them, so he can get them out of whatever shitty situation they’re in, but.

 

He can’t hurt them. Even if it’s for the best, if he ends up getting to pull them out of an abusive home, he can’t hurt them any more than the life he leads already has. So he has JARVIS (and then Friday) watch the hospitals and CPS for kids the right age that match his marks, but none of them are distinctive enough.

 

Not even when he wakes up the day after the Battle of New York with his whole body covered in different shades of blue, yellow, and black--there are just too many casualties to catalogue them all.

 

The marks always disappear faster than he thinks they should. But he never really thinks about it too hard--after all, biology’s pretty finicky on a case to case basis, soul science even more so.

 

∞

 

Friday finds his soulmate at 7 A.M.

 

Tony sucks at being idle, so he’s been listening to a police scanner with one ear and an EMS channel with the other one, speed-reading everything he can find about traumatic injury recovery even though he himself has recovered from more than one traumatic injury in his life. The slashmarks on his abdomen have already started fading to pale gray, and they stopped hurting almost as soon as he got them, but he still can’t seem to focus.

 

Then Friday says, _“I’ve got something, boss_ ,” and he drops everything.

 

“Show me.” He pops to his feet and moves over to the big workstation, a table that turns into a 3D holo.

 

Friday throws up a packet of hospital paperwork under the name _John Doe,_ a police report about the incident, and a picture of the kid’s sleeping face. Tony reaches out as if to touch, but his fingers go through. “Is he--”

 

_“He’s alive. Out of surgery as of ten minutes ago and on his way to recovery.”_

 

All the tension goes out of Tony at once. He leans his weight on the edge of the table, still just staring at the kid’s face, because...Tony doesn’t have a name, doesn’t have an age, he doesn’t know a single thing about the kid, but Jesus, he looks so _young_. And he’s Tony’s. “What do we know about him?”

 

_“Five stab wounds in exactly the same places as you. He was found by passerby at 6:00 in an alley on the five hundred block of 9th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen, naked--”_

 

Tony freezes. “Naked?”

 

 _“Yes, boss. Though his preliminary exam showed no signs of sexual assault.”_ Tony makes himself ease up, though the tight knot in his chest doesn’t go away. _“With no wallet and no phone, the first responders were unable to make an I.D. But they estimate he’s around twenty years old, five feet five inches, a hundred twenty pounds.”_ Skinny. He’s too skinny. “ _They ran his fingerprints. No results in any of their databases.”_

 

“Try the classified databases. SHIELD, Homeland, Interpol. You know the drill.”

 

_“That’ll take some time. I can try to bypass their internal protocols.”_

 

“Do it.” Tony waves his hand to collapse the data from the workstation down onto his smart glasses. “I’m going to the hospital. It’ll probably be a while before he wakes up. Let me know when you have something.”

 

By the time he gets to the hospital at 7:20, the kid is gone.

 

Tony stands at the foot of the empty hospital bed with the curtain in his hand for a long minute before his brain catches up. He leans back out the door and flags down a nurse. “Uh, hey. Yeah, hi.”

 

“Hi,” she says, with a bemused smile. “Can I help you?”

 

“Hope so. The guy who was in this room, John Doe. Did you move him?”

 

The nurse pulls a chart--a real, paper chart--off the wall and checks it. Tony reads over her shoulder, but he doesn’t know the hospital shorthand, so he has to wait until she says, “Um...no, doesn’t look like we moved him. He should still be in there. What’s your interest, Mr. Stark?”

 

Tony rubs his stomach absently. “It’s classified. Could the police have moved him?”

 

“I’ll check with the desk.” She puts the chart back on the wall and disappears down the hall.

 

Tony turns back into the empty hospital room and taps the side of his glasses to wake the heads up display. “Friday, need you to multitask. Get me into the hospital security cameras.”

 

 _“Sure thing, boss.”_

 

The security feed for the hall outside pops up in front of his right lens, showing Tony and the nurse talking a moment ago. “Wind it back.” Tony watches the footage roll back, sped up and blurry, until he sees that face he can’t get out of his head, at which point he says, “Stop. There.”

 

Friday does. The video plays forward at normal speed, and Tony watches his soulmate stagger into the hall leaning on an IV pole like it’s the only thing keeping him up. A conflicted feeling twists like a hand in Tony’s chest, because the kid just got stabbed _five times_ and he’s walking around? But also, “A man after my own heart, huh?”

 

_“Unfortunately, I think you’re right.”_

 

On the feed, the kid makes his way unsteadily down the hall, stops for a moment to lean against the wall, exchanges a brief word with a nurse, keeps going around a corner, and catches the door to what looks like the locker room. “ _No visual in the locker room,”_ Friday says. _“Here he is coming out.”_ The video cuts, and then the kid comes back out of the room, less one IV pole, in what must be someone’s stolen clothes--a roomy hoodie, a pair of jeans that are about to fall off his hips, and a baseball cap he pulls down low over his eyes.

 

Tony leans back against the wall and watches his soulmate move gingerly into the elevator. “Where the hell are you going?” he mutters. The kid, understandably, doesn’t answer--just shuffles out on one of the basement levels and into a lab door that should be locked but...he just jerks it open. “What’s that room, Fry?”

 

“ _Hematology, boss.”_

 

“Eyes inside?”

 

_“Negative. But here’s an angle through the window.”_

 

“Well, that counts.”

 

Friday shows him a feed from across the hall, on a strange angle--just quirked in the right direction for Tony to see the kid through the window of the lab. His face is hidden by the baseball cap, but his movements look so weak and shaky that Tony’s fingers twitch wanting to reach out and hold him. He can’t, though; he can only watch the kid pull a sample out of the cabinet, uncap it, and pour it down the drain. He pinches his lips between his thumb and forefinger, then says, “Whose blood is that? Do we have access to the lab records?”

 

“ _It was marked ‘John Doe,’”_ Friday answers. “ _It’s his own blood, boss.”_

 

“Huh.”

 

On the video, the kid leaves the hematology lab, goes back upstairs, and leaves the hospital via the front door. He flags down a cab, and Tony gets Friday to follow the cab to where it stops--an alley in Hell’s Kitchen near where the kid got picked up this morning. The kid gets out of the cab, and Tony has no idea how he’s still upright, at this point, but he’s starting to connect it with how his marks always disappear really fast.

 

The cab pulls away, the kid goes down the alley, and a few minutes later he comes back out with a backpack. Hestops on the corner, looks around, and makes eye contact with the camera Tony’s watching through. Tony’s heart skips a beat. The kid takes something out of his bag, sticks it on the side of his cap, and the entire feed cuts out in a burst of snow.

 

Tony pushes away from the wall. “Uh, Fry?”

 

 _“The feed’s gone,”_ Friday says. _“Source code’s scrambled. I can’t recover it.”_

 

“Freaky. Okay. Can you follow the signature?”

 

“ _Yes. Looks like he went to...”_

 

Times Square. The damn kid went to Times Square. One more camera cuts out, and then the kid uses the crowd to disappear, good old fashioned evasion tactics. The part of Tony that’s not aggressively frustrated is impressed by the fact that his soulmate knows how to shake surveillance, and the part of him that’s neither of those is intensely concerned by the fact that the kid seems to be running from something. “Can you pick him up again on the way out?”

 

“ _No. Sorry, boss. He disappeared.”_

 

∞

 

After that, he spends three straight days down a research hole.

 

He can’t fucking find the kid. He’s good at keeping his face off the cameras, and when he can’t avoid them he uses whatever the hell that nifty camera-scrambler is to stay hidden. Tony tries talking to the police, seeing what evidence they’ve got on the case, but apparently someone broke into the evidence locker and disappeared Tony’s soulmate’s bloody clothes, and when he goes to check the security footage it’s that same video snow. The kid’s good at covering his tracks.

 

Tony’s chewing the straw of an empty smoothie cup and rubbing the pale gray slashmark on his chest, staring blankly at the scrambled source code of the evidence room footage when Steve walks through the door and says, “Friday, shut him down.”

 

Tony whirls in his chair, indignant. “Excuse you?”

 

Steve ignores him. “‘For Your Health’ protocol. It’s been 72 hours, right?”

 

_“Indeed it has, Captain Rogers.”_

 

Tony’s workstation shuts down. “What’s your damage, Cap?” He puts his empty cup down on the desk and stands in one smooth motion--or, it _would_ be one smooth motion, if all the blood didn’t rush straight to his head and make him lurch to the side.

 

Steve steadies him with his hands on his shoulders. “It’s not _my_ damage. That’s kind of the point--it’s the ‘For _Your_ Health’ protocol, not the ‘For _My_ Health’ protocol.”

 

“Wow. That was a lot of italics in one sentence.”

 

“Thanks. I try.” Steve lets go of him. “Come on. Let’s get some real food in you, and I’ll tell you what’s been going on while you’ve been wrapped up in personal drama.”

 

“I’m sorry--personal drama? Trying to track down my soulmate is ‘personal drama’ now?”

 

“Yeah. That’s, like--the _definition_ of personal drama.”

 

Tony trails after him to the door. “There’re those italics again. You really gotta watch those.”

 

“Jesus. I keep forgetting how much you talk.”

 

Apparently, it’s the middle of the night. Clint, Natasha and Wanda are sitting at the counter when Steve steers Tony into the kitchen; the girls are in full riot gear, like they just got back from a patrol, and Clint’s dishing out pancakes in flannel pajama pants. Tony helps himself to the stool next to Natasha while Steve goes around to the fridge. “What’s the occasion, ladies? Doombots?”

 

Natasha steals a blueberry out of Clint’s bowl and pops it in her mouth, ignoring his look. “Hardly,” she says. “Spider-Man needed an assist with one of his flavors of the week.”

 

Tony rests his chin on his hand. “Ouch. Wunderkid finally cracks and asks us for help and I’m not his very first call? I’m hurt.”

 

“I’m not a kid,” says a voice behind him. “And I didn’t _ask_ for help.”

 

Spider-Man pads around the counter on silent lycra feet like he lives here and isn’t just visiting. Tony blames the amount of time he’s been awake for the fact that he stares for at least a minute before his brain catches up to his eyes. Spider-Man’s limping, moving gingerly as he takes a glass out of the cabinet and pours himself a glass of water, and he’s so skinny that the urge to pick him up and walk around carrying him hits Tony out of left field. Again--he blames the exhaustion.

 

Spider-Man leans his hip against the fridge. “How’d you guys know to show up, anyway?”

 

“Television,” Wanda says around a mouthful of pancake. “We turned on NBC and saw you getting your ass kicked on the nightly news.”

 

“Hey,” Spider-Man points his glass of water at her, “I wasn’t getting my ass kicked.”

 

Clint snorts. “Sure. You had him right where you wanted him.”

 

“Look, I’m just a little tender from this run-in I had with Green Goblin a couple days ago, okay? I can usually handle Doc Ock no problem.”

 

“Doc Ock?” Steve asks. “Is that the fat guy with the--”

 

“The giant robot tentacles? Yeah. It’s not really a sneaky name.” Spider-Man tugs his mask up over his nose so he can actually drink the water he’s been holding, and Tony’s eyes do _not_ zero in on his mouth. Not at all. Spider-Man looks at Tony, motions to Steve. “Is it Alzheimer’s, or is he just slow?”

 

Tony smiles delightedly. “Neither. Freezer burn.”

 

Steve gives them both his “disappointed Captain America” look, and hands Tony a bottle of kombucha. Tony makes a face at it. “I don’t like this health kick you’re on, Cap.”

 

“Drink it. It’s good for you.”

 

Natasha slides Spider-Man a plate of pancakes--it’s enough to coax him to sit on one of the counter stools. He folds one of his legs up to his chest and digs in as Natasha says, “You should call us more often. You don’t have to do this job alone. You shouldn’t.”

 

Spider-Man stabs a blueberry; it pops. “I’m not gonna sign the Accords.”

 

Steve leans on the counter. “No one’s saying you have to. This can stay between us.”

 

“Sure.” Spider-Man laughs. “Us and everyone who was watching the news.”

 

Tony sips his kombucha, and it’s disgusting enough that it kickstarts his brain back to join the party as Clint says, “We’ve got a long history of telling SHIELD to go fuck themselves. You’re out there on the streets helping people--you need an assist, you’ve got it.”

 

Spider-Man’s quiet for a long moment. Then: “I can’t tell you guys who I am.”

 

He sounds so young Tony’s heart hurts, thinking of him out there alone, facing down astronomical odds and heinous evils and all the shit the press throws at him. He wonders if Spider-Man has anyone who he can go to for help, or if he’s like Tony was for those first few months before Pepper and Rhodey found him out, only a lot poorer and a lot less experienced.

 

Tony jolts off his stool and goes around the counter to look Spider-Man in the eye. Or, well--in the mask. “We don’t need to know who you are, alright? We know you’re on our team, and that’s good enough. You call, and we’ll come. Every time. Capiche?”

 

“G’bless you.”

 

Tony’s lips twitch, but he doesn’t laugh. Not even a little. “The correct response was ‘yes, sir.’”

 

“Kinky.”

 

“Mind out of the gutter. Do we have an understanding?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

Tony’s stomach drops out through his feet, and the urge to pick Spider-Man up and carry him around is suddenly much less confusing. There’s a destination now. It’s Tony’s bed. Because Tony wants to bite that exposed lower lip and figure out where the edges of that tight lycra suit are, so bad that he forgets, for a second, that he just spent three days looking for his soulmate. Then the memory of the kid’s face flits back into his head, and he steps back. “Good. You’ve got my number.”

 

Spider-Man tilts his head. “Actually, I don’t.”

 

Tony moves for the hall. “Friday, get him my number. And add him to the entry-with-alert list. And cancel Steve’s standing kombucha order, ASAP. That’s priority one, actually.”

 

As he walks toward his bedroom, he hears Steve say, “Don’t do that, Friday,” and Spider-Man laughing. It makes something inside him warm, and he...doesn’t think about it.

 

∞

 

The morning of his 13th birthday, Peter wakes up with a big black circle on his chest. Aunt May finds him in the bathroom having a full-on panic attack--the kind he hasn’t had since his parents died--keeps him home sick from school, and holds him until he gets a black scratch on his hand that means his soulmate is still alive. Everyone knows the connection breaks once your soulmate is dead, that soul science relies on living participants.

 

When May has him calmed down enough to start thinking rationally, they come to the conclusion that it must be some sort of surgery scar. Peter sits up all night Googling new methods of surgery, but nothing he finds would leave a mark like that, and then...it never goes away. It never even fades, just stays that dark black color for weeks, and then months, and then years. He lets May think it’s gone. When he considers all the other lies he tells her, that one seems pretty miniscule.

 

He gets other marks, of course. Bruises and cuts and concussions that turn his vision spotty-gray with the stars his soulmate must be seeing. It’s more than your average person would get, but not near as much as Peter incurs in the course of being Spider-Man, so he can’t judge.

 

What he can do is worry.

 

And he does, because his soulmate is apparently walking around with a gaping chest wound, and no matter how many medical journals Peter trawls through, he can’t find any cases matching the mark he carries around with him. Then the Battle of New York happens, and he suddenly has the thought that, _shit,_ maybe they’re an alien, and that’s a whole ’nother kind of worry.

 

It’s probably better, he thinks, that he doesn’t know who his soulmate is. He wouldn’t want to have to lie to them about who he is, what he does, but he doesn’t think he’d be able to tell them, either. Not when he knows it would put them in danger, in the line of fire of every villain who wants a piece of Spider-Man. Sometimes when he has enough free time to feel sorry for himself, he thinks about how lonely he is and how much he wants someone to _talk_ to--just talk to.

 

But he doesn’t really have that much free time. And anyways, there are thousands of lonely people in New York--Peter’s nothing special.

 

∞

 

It takes Peter a while to get used to having the Avengers on speed dial.

 

Well, mostly he has Tony Stark on speed dial, but sometimes one of the others will tag along to help out. He tries to only call them when he really needs it, because he doesn’t want to get used to having them around--doesn’t want to use them as a crutch and then get caught off guard when they stop humoring him, a year or two down the line.

 

He’s under no illusions that this is a permanent situation. They thought his bad guys were too puny to show up on their radar before, and they’ll go back to thinking that again once they feel like they’ve tossed him enough charity. But in the meantime, Peter’s not dumb enough to pass up the opportunity to _not_ get chucked through buildings just because he’s proud. He’s not proud.

 

Usually he slips away to nurse his wounds in the peace of his own apartment, because he’s sure he can’t afford whatever insanely state-of-the-art healthcare SHIELD and Tony provide for the Avengers. This works for a month or so, and then they’re all dusting themselves off after a few rounds with the Sandman, trying not to think about whether the dust is part of the guy they just blew to kingdom come, and Tony says, “Hey, Spidey, you should come to shawarma.”

 

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Peter says, not thinking. “I’ve got homework.”

 

The Iron Man suit goes eerily still. “I’m sorry,” Tony says, through the modulator. “Did you just say you have _homework?_ Please don’t tell me you’re an actual child.”

 

“I’m twenty!” Peter says indignantly, still not thinking. “I’m in college!”

 

Clint wanders up, quiver full again. “Who’s in college?”

 

Tony waves a hand at Peter. “Spider-Man. Who should apparently be Spider- _Boy._ ”

 

Peter glares. “Only if you’re Iron _Asshat_.”

 

“Wow,” Tony says, sarcastically. “What a zinger. Really, that stung.”

 

Nearby, a group of police officers fight back a mob of rabid press corps. Given that most of the buildings on the block are still covered in sand drifts that are probably about ready to topple over, Peter thinks it’s probably a disaster waiting to happen, but no one else seems worried. Clint shoots him a sideways look and asks, “When do you even have time for college?”

 

“In between my day job, my night job, and my patrols.”

 

Tony flips up his faceplate. His stern look does something interesting to Peter’s heart rate, but that only lasts until he opens his mouth. “Two jobs, college, _and_ you’re a superhero? No.”

 

Peter frowns. “No? What do you mean, ‘no’?”

 

“I mean, no. That’s too much. You’re gonna work yourself to death.”

 

“I’m fine. I can handle it. And anyway, I’ve got student loans.”

 

“No.”

 

Peter throws up his hands. “You can’t just keep saying ‘no’! What the hell do you mean? You can’t tell me how to live my life, no matter who you are.”

 

“I’m paying your student loans. You’re getting a stipend from the Avengers--“

 

“I’m not an Avenger!”

 

“Then from Stark Industries.” Tony steps in close to him, and in the suit he’s a full head taller than Peter, so Peter has to tilt his head back to look at him. He resolutely pushes down the urge to climb him like a tree. “Enough to live comfortably, support your lifestyle.”

 

Peter swallows. It’s a tempting offer. But it’s his turn to say, “No.”

 

Tony frowns. “No?”

 

Peter steps away from him. “I don’t take charity. I can take care of myself. And if that’s...if that’s what this is, you guys coming out to help me--if it’s charity, then you can stop.” Maybe he is too proud, after all. Or...hurt that they don’t see him as an equal. Or just concussed. “I managed on my own for six years before you guys stepped in, and I’ll manage when you give up on me.”

 

Tony just stares at him. Distantly, Peter registers the flash of cameras going off, the clamor of reporters, a dozen different sirens converging on the first responder camp. He just stares into Tony’s eyes and wills him to say something that will fix this, because Peter doesn’t really want them to stop. He doesn’t want to go back to being alone. But he will. If Tony won’t budge.

 

What Iron Man comes up with is, “You were fourteen when you started this?”

 

Hesitantly, Peter nods.

 

Behind him, Clint says, “Jesus. You fought in the Battle of New York that year, didn’t you?”

 

“Yeah,” Peter says, confused. “So?”

 

A sad smile flickers over Tony’s face. “Not a lot of fourteen year olds ready to lay down their lives for the greater good. Hell, when I was fourteen, I was a full-time menace. I’m sure you’ve seen the magazines, the videos. So, you’re...you’re better than the best of us, Spidey.”

 

Peter’s quiet for a long moment, because what’s he supposed to say to that? What’s he supposed to say to his childhood hero, his role model, one of the greatest heroes on Earth, who flew a nuke into a fucking black hole, telling him he’s _better than the best of us?_ It wipes the argument they were just having out of his mind, wipes away the indignity of feeling like a charity case. What it _doesn’t_ erase is the urge to wrap his legs around the Iron Man armor.

 

Clint clears his throat awkwardly. Peter shuffles his feet, blushing so fiercely he’s very, very glad for the safety of his mask. “Okay,” he says, for lack of something better. “Uh. Shawarma?”

 

∞

 

The mystery of Tony Stark’s soulmate has been a favorite topic of the press since he turned eighteen. Not that no one talks about it _before_ he turns eighteen--just, there are some holdouts who think children need their privacy, shouldn’t be sexualized or romanticized in that way, but when he turns eighteen everyone jumps on the bandwagon of wild speculation.

 

He mostly doesn’t let it bother him, except when girls start stabbing themselves in the palms while he’s waving at press events, and then he works with PR and legal to craft a very specific statement threatening to sue anyone who tries that again. He doesn’t worry about accidentally turning away his real soulmate--he figures no one he’s destined to be with would try _that_.

 

After Afghanistan, with the permanent wound of the arc reactor in his chest, he seriously weighs the pros and cons of making an official statement. Pros: it’s almost definitely a distinctive enough injury to find who he’s looking for. Cons: he’ll be telling the world his heart can be pulled from his chest with one easy motion.

 

It’s Rhodey who talks him out of the statement, in the end. Tony’s always been willing to risk his own skin to get what he wants, but Rhodey points out that if, god forbid, his soulmate turns up somewhere like a hostile nation, they can be used as leverage before Tony could ever get to them.

 

Tony and Pepper start out as a convenient lie for the press--he announces her as his soulmate, since she woke up once in college with black vertical lines on her wrists and hasn’t gotten anything since. Then they turn into something more, and then she can’t handle his lifestyle or the black marks that still show up all over his body or the way he can be terribly mean when he wants to be, and they go back to being a convenient lie. Officially, they’re still soulmates.

 

But the ring Tony keeps in a drawer in his workshop isn’t for Pepper. It never was, if he’s being honest with himself. It has, apparently, always been for a skinny boy with big brown eyes, a mouth that looks like it frowns too much, freckles on his nose, and a strange unexplainable affinity for not dying when stabbed five times in the torso.

 

∞

 

Peter wanders down to Tony’s lab for the first time six months after they meet.

 

It’s not wandering in the strictest sense of the word, in that the rest of the tower is deserted and Peter’s looking for someone to ask about an alien-looking guy he just ran into, but it’s wandering in that he doesn’t actually know if Tony’s there. At least not until Tony calls, “Underoos? That you?”

 

Peter tears his eyes away from all the really cool tech he figures he’ll never be allowed to touch, tamps down on that starved part of his soul that’s really tired of the junky biochem labs at NYU, and follows the sound of Tony’s voice into another section of the lab.

 

He still doesn’t see him. “Tony?”

 

There’s a pause, then: “In here, kid. Chop chop, I need your sticky fingers.”

 

Peter turns another corner, behind a fogged glass partition, and stops in his tracks. His eyes take in the scene in front of him before his brain catches up--Tony, laying on some sort of dentist’s chair, a fisheye mirror in front of him and his hand holding the arc reactor that Peter could’ve sworn was just connected to the suit but apparently plugs right into his _heart_. Into the big gaping hole in his chest. The big circular wound on his chest, that...

 

That matches the mark on Peter’s skin.

 

Tony catches him staring. “I know it’s gross, but you’re gonna have to get over here and stick your hand inside me. ASAP. The longer you stare the closer I get to dying.”

 

Peter snaps into motion. He’s at Tony’s side in an instant, in crisis mode. “What do you need?”

 

“There’s a wire. Corroded, should be all chunked up with rust. I was pulling it out, I dropped it, and now I can just barely feel it with the tips of my fingers. But since you’re sticky...”

 

Tony motions helpfully in the direction of the huge fucking gaping hole in his chest, the one that makes Peter sick to look at, because-- _put the arc reactor back in, Jesus Christ, it’s the only thing keeping his fucking_ soulmate _alive._ “If you could dig it out, that would be peachy.”

 

“Peachy,” Peter repeats, distantly. “Yeah, I. Okay.”

 

He peels the gloves off his hands, sanitizes them with some Purell from a bottle on Tony’s tool cart, takes a deep breath to steel himself, and reaches down. He can feel the heat of Tony’s body cavity all around his hand, and for some reason it surprises him, like just because it’s metal he expected it to be cold. It’s not--it’s as hot and weighty as the feeling of Tony’s eyes on his face, even through the mask, of _his soulmate_ staring at him intently, and oh god.

 

God, this is not the time for a mental breakdown. He’s elbow-deep in Tony’s chest, fingertips literally inches away from his exposed heart--it doesn’t matter if he’s just found out that the man he thinks he’s probably in love with is his soulmate. He has to finish this, make sure Tony’s healthy and safe, and _then_ he can lock himself in the nearest bathroom and have a panic attack.

 

His fingertips brush a wire, thick and bumpy with corrosion. He sticks to it, and _oh-so-carefully_ starts to draw it out of Tony’s chest, until the end comes free with a chunk of goop.

 

Peter’s heart stops. “Is that--“

 

“Normal, that’s normal,” Tony assures him. “You’re fine.”

 

Peter watches numbly as Tony plugs a fresh wire into the arc reactor housing, and reinstalls the reactor itself with a quick twist of the wrist. “See?” Tony says. “Good as new.”

 

“Good as new,” Peter echoes.

 

Tony quirks a confused smile at him. “You okay? I feel like normally you would’ve made at least three jokes by now. _We can rebuild him._ Six Billion Dollar Man? No? Nothing?”

 

“I...” Peter’s brain is offline. “I’m--”

 

Tony reaches out and catches one of his hands. Peter jolts like he’s been shocked, because it’s the first time Tony’s ever touched him skin-to-skin. It’s the first time anyone in a long time has touched him skin-to-skin, except May, and it feels so good. It feels _right_.

 

“Spidey?” Tony prods.

 

Peter opens his mouth and closes it. _My name’s Peter Parker,_ he wants to say. _I’m your soulmate. I have a black circle in the middle of my chest. I was so scared I’d never meet you, and it turns out you’ve been here for ages, and please just hold me._ Because Tony can take care of himself, can’t he? He can take care of himself (and Peter, too), Peter doesn’t have to hide from him. Tony will understand, because they understand each other, they’re _perfect,_ he’s perfect.

 

Tony squeezes his hand. Peter says, “I’m your--”

 

“Tony!” comes a woman’s voice, from behind them. “What are you doing way back here?”

 

Stilletto heels click swiftly around the corner, and Pepper Potts--who Peter’s only seen on the cover of magazines and on her impeccably-curated Instagram page--strides into their section of the lab. She’s in a smart blue pantsuit, strawberry hair recently cut in a neat chop at her shoulders, and she raises an eyebrow when she sees them. “About time you find someone else to stick their hands in your chest cavity. I always hated having to do that.”

 

“Hey, Pep,” Tony says brightly. “Did I forget a meeting?”

 

“Don’t pretend you ever had any intention of attending our quarterly earnings review. It hurts my feelings when you lie to me, and anyway I can see right through you.”

 

“Fine. Good. Saves me the effort.”

 

Pepper sweeps past Peter and bends to drop a swift kiss on Tony’s cheek, which he receives with an affectionate smile. Peter picks up his suit gloves and shuffles away to give them room, swallowing down the swell of bitter disappointment in his throat. How could he forget? Tony and Pepper have been together _nine years_ , they’re...they’re soulmates, if the press is to be believed. No matter how much Tony might flirt with Peter, he still goes home to her at night.

 

Peter’s not going to take that from him. Not that he even _could_ , but he’s not going to sacrifice a good working relationship and a good...a good _friendship_ , for nothing. Because it would be nothing. There’s no way Tony would leave Pepper, and no way Peter would ask him to.

 

Pepper’s berating Tony about some charity gala he has to attend next week, the fact that he hasn’t started writing his speech, or something--Peter doesn’t really hear any of it. He starts to slip towards the door, his initial reason for coming down here completely forgotten.

 

“Hey, wunderkid!” Tony calls, as Peter reaches the corner. “Thanks for playing nurse!”

 

“Kinky,” Peter shoots back, but his heart’s not in it.

 

He leaves before he can see the smile fade from Tony’s face.

 

∞

 

Even before Peter walks in on arc reactor maintenance in the lab, before every hope he secretly fostered for someday being with his soulmate crashes down around his ears, before he has to resign himself to the fact that he’ll probably die alone in a back alley with Burger King wrappers stuck to him like paper maché--Peter dreams about Tony.

 

He dreams that Tony comes over to his dorm at NYU and crawls into his tiny twin bed with him, sleeps pressed up between Peter and the exposed cinderblock wall, so Peter can bury his face in his chest and inhale the smell of his aftershave and feel the safe cage of Tony’s arms around his back. He dreams that Tony presses a kiss to his forehead, his chin, his mouth, and murmurs, _I’ve got you, kid._ That they can hide from the rest of the world, together, at least for a night.

 

He dreams that Tony rushes up to him in the rubble after a battle, scrambles out of the suit and pulls Peter’s mask off and _kisses him_ , holds him tight just to prove they’re both alive, covered in soot and sweat and blood. Dreams that Tony takes him back to the tower and lays him out in his big king bed and they strip each other desperately out of their clothes and run their hands over each other’s bare skin, comparing bruises and black marks. Proof--of life, of belonging.

 

And, if sometimes he does a little more than dream, well. Who will ever know?

 

If, in the middle of the night, he slips into the tower through one of the windows in the penthouse, if he settles down silently outside Tony’s room and sits with his ear to the door, just listening to the sound of his heartbeat, because ever since he saw the arc reactor he can’t get rid of this nightmare where he turns over and there’s just a gaping hole in Tony’s chest, if he falls asleep like that, lulled by that _thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump,_ until the sounds of Tony getting up wake him...

 

Who will ever know?

 

∞

 

Tony steps outside his bedroom, turns to head for the kitchen, and pauses.

 

Turns back. There’s a window open at the end of the hall. It’s raining and windy outside, and for a second he could’ve sworn he saw a clump of...webbing, or something, hanging from the latch. “Friday,” he asks, mildly, “did we have any unauthorized visitors last night?”

 

_“Negative, boss. I would’ve alerted you.”_

 

“Right.” Tony scratches his beard. “Did someone come in through the window?”

 

_“Someone...may have slept here last night. But no one unauthorized.”_

 

Tony makes a mental note to tell Spider-Man he’s allowed to use the front door, or at least the landing pad, and goes over to close the window. He wishes the kid would’ve stayed for breakfast, or at least long enough to wait out the rain. Tony doesn’t like to think of him out there in the wet and the cold in just that lycra suit, because he won’t let him make him a new one...he’d much rather have Spidey here safe, warm, well-fed, and bundled up in Tony’s bed.

 

Whoa. Tony freezes in the middle of the hall, not sure whether he can credit that thought to still being half asleep. Because--where the hell did that come from?

 

He cares about Spider-Man, sure; maybe even a little more than he cares for the rest of the team, because he can’t help it. The kid’s quick as a whip, he speaks science, he gives Tony back as good as he gets, he’s a superhero with shiny gold morals, and _yeah,_ okay, maybe there’s a part of Tony that goes completely mushy when he thinks of the guy--but he has a soulmate out there. And he hasn’t forgotten his face, hasn’t forgotten the tired line of his shoulders.

 

Hasn’t forgotten the terror of waking up to the first stab wound, or all the bruises that bloomed stark and black on his skin for _years_. So it doesn’t matter what he feels for Spider-Man.

 

Rain runs down the window.

 

Tony shakes his head and turns back to the kitchen. God. Ass over teakettle for not one but _two_ reckless, skinny idiots, and he doesn’t even know either of their names.

 

∞

 

Tony hasn’t had occasion to use his media smile in a long time. It’s rusty.

 

Honestly, he’s not sure why he has to go to _this_ particular charity gala when Pepper let him get away with skipping the rest of the ones this year, but here he is. Leaned up against the wall with a glass of scotch, trying to hide from the million and one people who seem to want to shake his hand for “saving the world,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. He keeps wanting to ask _which time?_ but he knows that would lead to a longer conversation, and tonight he doesn’t have the patience.

 

Coming to these things with Pepper on his arm is a familiar charade, but he hasn’t had to do it since he found (sort of found) his soulmate. This time around, every time they stopped for a photo on the red carpet, every time some reporter shouted _When are you two getting married?_ and Pepper laughed charmingly and said _All in good time_ or _Wouldn’t you like to know?_ \--he was thinking of that face. Of how it would feel to say, _This is my husband._

 

Pepper only stayed on his arm long enough to get inside, and then his melancholy mood drove her off. That, or the allure of her gorgeous girlfriend. Natasha is resplendent in a floor-length black gown, chatting with dignitaries from somesuch Asian republic or another. As Tony watches, she snatches two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter and hands one to Pepper.

 

They really are good together; Tony can’t begrudge them that. He’s happy for them, it’s just...he wants what they have. Not with either of them, but with some kid whose name he doesn’t even know. _With Spider-Man,_ maybe, except no. He’s had too many.

 

He’s on his way to the veranda to hide from the responsibility of giving a speech when Steve snags him by the arm. As Natasha’s escort for the evening, Steve’s buttoned up in a penguin tux. He looms over Tony. “Hey. Why aren’t you answering your phone?”

 

“Pepper doesn’t let me bring it,” Tony reminds him. “Ever since the--“

 

“The sexting during the Tibetan delegation’s speech, yeah, I remember.” Steve lets go of his arm, pulls his phone out of his pocket and hands it over. “Bruce is trying to get a hold of you.”

 

Tony takes the phone.

 

Out on the veranda, he calls Bruce. The air is cool, dog days of summer with the promise of winter fast approaching, and the lights of Manhattan twinkle warm yellow in a way that’s almost romantic out across the dark maw of Central Park. Too bad Tony’s out here alone. The phone rings out once; Tony dials again, and waits. Finally, Bruce picks up.

 

“ _Steve?”_ he sounds tight, like he gets when he’s stressed. “ _Did you find him?”_

 

“I’m assuming him is me,” Tony says back, pacing to the rail. “What’s the problem, Houston?”

 

_“It’s, uh. Well, it’s.”_

 

“Use your words, Brucie-bear. Or, barring that, use math.”

 

“ _It’s Spider-Man.”_ Tony’s gut clenches. “ _He ran into some sort of chemical compound on patrol, it’s having...well, a strange effect. You need to--I think you should get over here.”_

 

Tony fights to keep his voice even, as his grip on the rail tightens enough that he feels his knuckles pop. “What sort of ‘strange effect’ are we talking about, exactly?”

 

_“Uh. How should I...Let’s say ‘enhanced libido.’ Extremely enhanced. Like, I’m worried his heart might actually explode if he doesn’t get off ASAP. And he’s shaking too much to do it himself.”_

 

Tony straightens abruptly. “What the fuck?”

 

“ _Yeah. I know, Tony. Like we’re in an episode of_ Star Trek _or something, right?”_

 

“Can you give him something to calm him down?”

 

_“Not without knowing what was in that compound. I’m trying to reverse engineer it from his blood, but it’s slow going. I think it’s alien. I think…I think we should handle it the old fashioned way.”_

 

“Which is?”

 

_“Don’t make me say it. He’s asking for you. Just get here.”_

 

Tony calls his suit from the car downstairs with his wristbands, and a moment later he’s rocketing over the city skyline towards the bright beacon of the tower. His heart’s pounding in his chest hard enough that he thinks the arc reactor must be pulsing, because he can’t stop hearing the words on repeat in his head: _He’s asking for you._ And because--sex pollen, really?

 

At least it’s more interesting than a charity gala. Tony touches down on the landing pad and is inside before the suit has even finished putting itself away, heading down toward Bruce’s lab like the hounds of hell are licking at his heels. He can’t get there fast enough.

 

Still, he’s not prepared for what he finds.

 

Bruce is at a workstation, looking haggard and just about done with the entire situation. He’s accompanied by Wanda, who’s calmly eating out of a pint of Ben & Jerry’s limited edition Avenger’s flavor God of Toffee, watching the proceedings like they’re a particularly interesting television show. They both look over when Tony enters, but he barely looks at them.

 

Instead, he’s looking at Spider-Man.

 

They’ve closed him in one of the fishbowl exam rooms in the lab, bare except for a biobed and a locked cabinet of medical supplies. He’s pacing, or doing his best to pace--probably trying to get rid of excess energy--but his steps are so unsteady that he keeps having to steady himself on the wall. The only really visible sign of his problem is the noticeable bulge in the front of his pants, and...the lycra suit does absolutely nothing to disguise the issue. Tony drags his eyes away.

 

Bruce comes over to him. “Tony. I still don’t know what exactly he ingested, so--you should know, if you go in there, you could be affected, too. And you don’t have a healing factor.”

 

“Who cares,” Tony says. “Is he mentally competent? I mean, can he consent to this?”

 

Bruce looks uncomfortable. He glances back at Wanda, but she just shrugs. “I don’t know. He asked for you before the effects really took him, if that helps at all.”

 

“Not really.” Second-hand consent by way of heresay isn’t really Tony’s style, but he’s not about to leave the kid in there alone when his heart’s about to explode and _he’s asking for him_. “I’ll just use my hands. Minimally scarring for all involved parties. You should probably--“

 

“I have to monitor both of your vitals. Sorry.”

 

“Fine.” Tony gives Wanda a pointed look. “You. Scram. The peep show’s not free.”

 

She takes her ice cream and disappears out of the lab without protest. Which leaves...nothing but to go inside. Tony’s suddenly hot around the collar, in a way he hasn’t been, at least about sex, since he was in high school. With one last look at Bruce, he steps into the fishbowl. Closes the door behind him. Keeps his voice soft as he says, “Friday. Give us some privacy in here.” The fishbowl glass fogs up, blocking out the outside world.

 

Spider-Man looks up at the sound of his voice. “Tony. You came.” 

 

 _Not yet_ , Tony thinks, but doesn’t say. “Of course I came.”

 

The kid climbs over the biobed like he can’t be bothered to go around it and latches onto Tony like a monkey, arms around his shoulders and legs around his waist. Tony takes his weight easily, because the kid’s _too damn skinny_ , lets him burrow his face, still in the mask, into the crook of his neck. He runs his hand up and down Spider-Man’s back, and he shudders.

 

“Sorry,” the kid mumbles against Tony’s neck, almost too quiet to hear. “I know you’re with Pepper and I shouldn’t have asked for you, but I--just this once, I need you.”

 

Tony squeezes him tighter, not understanding. “Whatever you need, kid. Just tell me.”

 

Spider-Man makes a noise like there’s just too much in his chest, and it’s all tearing out at once. “I need you to...” he pulls his head back to look Tony in the eye as best he can. “I need you to help me get off, please, I’m sorry, but I feel like I’m gonna die and it has to be you.”

 

Tony cradles his head and eases him back onto the biobed. “No need to apologize,” he tries to keep his voice light. “I’ve always wanted to act out _Amok Time._ ”

 

The kid’s laugh is strained. “More like _This Side of Paradise_.”

 

“I don’t know.” Tony climbs on top of him, trying to keep his weight to the side so it’s not so much like he’s smothering him, even though he knows the kid could throw him off no problem. “That was more hippie-commune _kumbaya_ pollen, less rip-your-clothes-off.”

 

At those last words, Spider-Man’s hands tighten in Tony’s tuxedo shirt tight enough to tear it. Tony’s thigh presses up between his legs, and he makes a sound like _nngh_ that knocks the breath straight out of Tony’s lungs. He runs his thumb over the side of his neck.

 

“Can I touch you?” he asks. “Spidey, can I--“

 

The kid’s hips roll up, grinding against Tony’s leg, but he shakes his head. “Not--not yet. I need to...the suit, get me out of the suit, but you--you can’t tell anyone, okay?”

 

“Pinky swear.” Tony presses a kiss to his forehead. “Help me out, here.”

 

Together, they peel Spider-Man out of the suit. Tony grabs a pair of surgical scissors from the biobed’s drawer to help, because every time he tries to move even an inch away, the kid grabs on tight and says, “Sorry, I. I think you need to stay.” And Tony can’t say no to him. So he cuts carefully at his waist and peels him out of his pants, tries to ignore the fact that he’s wearing nothing underneath even though they’re probably well past the point of that mattering.

 

The upper half of the suit goes next. For a moment Tony’s brain shorts out with how fucking _hot_ it is that Spider-Man’s naked except for the mask and he’s still buttoned up in his tux, how hot it will be to walk out of here with white stains on the tailored black fabric, and then he sees it.

 

A black circle in the middle of the kid’s chest. The size of...the size of...

 

Tony goes up on one elbow and presses shaking fingers to the mark, horribly certain he’s hallucinating until he feels the warmth of Spider-Man’s skin, the sticky layer of sweat. He looks up at the mask, his mind suddenly connecting a million pieces of information. “Take it off.”

 

When Spider-Man just stares at him for another long moment, breathing shakily, Tony lurches up his body so they’re face to face, and says, “ _Please._ I need to see you. Take it off.”

 

The kid reaches up and yanks the mask off.

 

Tony feels like he just got punched. Because _that face_. That’s the face on the hospital security footage, the face he lost in Time Square and never found again, the face he’s been seeing in his dreams for half a year. He takes the kid’s head in his hands. “You’re him. You’re--“

 

“Peter,” Spider-Man supplies. “Peter Parker.”

 

Tony smiles so hard his face hurts. “Hi, Peter Parker.”

 

Peter’s expression just _shatters_. He drags Tony down and kisses him, mouth hot and insistent like he’s sure this will be the last chance he ever gets. Tony gathers him up in his arms as best he can while still lying half on top of him, like he’s been wanting to do since he first saw him on the hospital footage, first saw him in the kitchen upstairs, holding him in the shelter of his body.

 

All those miles of pale naked skin, marked by the bruises Tony knows are on his own body, and the tux Tony’s wearing suddenly feels stifling, but he can’t get rid of it, not when Peter’s like this. No matter how much he wants to make love-- _for real--_ to his soulmate. So he just presses down against Peter and swallows his whine, feels Peter’s legs come up lock around his waist.

 

They part, breathing heavy. “Tony,” Peter gasps. “Please--”

 

Tony presses their foreheads together. “I’ve got you, kid. I’ve got you.”

 

∞

 

Peter wakes with a start.

 

He’s in an unfamiliar bed. He knows it’s not his, because it’s soft and he can’t feel any springs in his back and he hasn’t fallen halfway off it over the course of the night.

 

Reality takes a while to come back to him, mostly because he’s got a pounding headache. Then it all pours in at once--that he’s in the tower, that he got dosed with some sort of chemical last night, that he, _oh God_ , he had sex with Tony even though Tony’s with Pepper, he _told Tony his name_ , he showed him his face, and now he’s...not in the suit. He’s in someone else’s clothes.

 

He looks down at the t-shirt he’s wearing. AC/DC. Even if he hadn’t seen the shirt before, he’d recognize the smell of Tony’s aftershave, stuck in the very fibers. “Oh, God.”

 

 _“Good morning, Spider-Man.”_ Peter jumps at Friday’s voice. “ _Do you need any assistance?”_

 

“No, I,” his voice sticks in his throat. “I’m fine, Friday. Thanks.”

 

Truth is, he’s not fine. He’s pretty sure he ruined the best relationship in his life last night in a moment of weakness, and he’s trying to re-calculate how he can emotionally, financially, and literally survive the fact that the Avengers--and his soulmate--are about to toss him out on his ass. This was what he was afraid of all along, and he was right. He should’ve listened to himself.

 

He’s got one leg out of bed and is about to go on a hunt for his lost spidey suit when the door opens and Tony slips in. Peter freezes. They stare at each other. Tony’s holding a breakfast tray that smells like pancakes, coffee, and maple syrup, but he sets it down on a table when he sees Peter about to make a break for it. “Peter? You got somewhere better to be?”

 

Peter stands up all the way. His legs feel like jelly, but he perseveres. “Look, I uh. I’m sorry about last night. I shouldn’t have dragged you into my problems like that.”

 

Tony frowns. “What the hell are you talking about?”

 

“I mean--I get if you just want to sweep this whole thing under the rug.” Peter drags a hand through his hair, and tries to ignore the fact that there are tears in his eyes. “I know you’re with Pepper, and you two are soulmates, and I’m not gonna--I’m not gonna try and get between you.”

 

“We’re not.”

 

Peter’s watery gaze finds Tony’s face. “What?”

 

“We’re not.”

 

“No, I heard you, but. You’re not _what?_ ”

 

Tony takes a step toward him. “Not soulmates. It’s just a cover for the press. We were just--I was just trying to keep crazy fans off my back. It’s was never Pepper. It’s you and me.”

 

“You and me,” Peter echoes.

 

“Yeah, kid.” Tony smiles. His eyes crinkle at the corners, and suddenly Peter remembers the image of Tony leaning over him last night, saying _Peter Parker_ and smiling just like that. “You and me. As long as you don’t actually sneak out the window like you were planning.”

 

Peter shakes his head. “No. No window. Can I--”

 

“Whatever you want,” Tony says, and sounds like he means it.

 

Peter crosses the space between them in two quick steps and wraps himself around Tony the same way he did in the fishbowl last night, arms and legs, face buried in the crook of his neck. Tony’s arms go around him automatically, and Peter holds on and holds on and holds on like he’s been wanting to do his whole entire life, because this one’s _his_. Tony’s his.

 

If the way Tony squeezes back is any indication, he feels the same way.

 

∞

 

Tony keeps good on his pinky swear not to reveal Peter’s identity. It makes for a lot of tricky maneuvering with the rest of the team, but he never once presses Peter to make the reveal, trusting that he’ll do it in his own time. Tony tells the team he found his soulmate, but that he’s a very private person and he’d prefer to remain anonymous, especially in light of who he ended up stuck with. After that, Peter makes damn sure Tony knows what he thinks of the term _stuck with_.

 

For the first time since he got bit by a radioactive spider at age fourteen, Peter has someone to talk to. He talks to Tony about everything, about being Spider-Man and struggling with his senior thesis and feeling guilty about lying to Aunt May and whether it’s acceptable to like _Star Wars_ and _Star Trek_ equally. Tony confides in him in turn, about the dozen projects he’s always got going, about national security--which he makes Peter pinky swear not to leak--about the team, his nightmares.

 

Peter tries bringing _yes, sir_ into the bedroom, and it goes so well that the next night he tries _daddy_ , and that’s--well. That one he probably won’t try again.

 

It’s a lot of adjustment, being Tony Stark’s soulmate, but Peter’s a member of the generation that found out aliens existed and then turned around and roasted them for being ugly in a gazillion memes. He’s adaptable. He acquiesces and quits _one_ of his two jobs, lets Tony pick up half the rent. It’s kind of uncomfortable, but it makes Tony feel better, so--where’s the harm?

 

Every time a black mark appears on his body, Peter still has a minor heart attack, but it’s better now, because he can pick up the phone and call Tony to make sure he’s okay. Tony’s not quite that chill, and tends to show up unannounced in baseball caps and sunglasses outside Peter’s lecture hall every time he so much as stubs a toe, but Peter can forgive him that.

 

The rent split on Peter’s dorm ends up being redundant pretty quickly. And Peter gets used to waking up with the shape of the arc reactor pressed into his cheek like the creases of a pillow.

 

∞

 

The first morning after _This Side of Paradise_ , they eat pancakes in bed.

 

It’s a terrible idea. Peter ends up with syrup on his borrowed sweatpants, and Tony gets it in his beard, which means it ends up smeared all over most of Peter’s body by the time the sun finishes coming up. But they both want to hide from the world for just a little bit longer, so they sit cross-legged with the tray between them, and have their first “Absolute Truth Time.”

 

“Absolute Truth Time?” Tony asks, half a laugh in his voice. “What is this, kindergarten?”

 

“Or the emotional equivalent,” Peter allows. “My aunt used to make me do this. It works.”

 

“So it’s like twenty questions and the truth half of truth or dare had a kid.”

 

“Uh, kind of? We just have to be completely honest with each other until it’s over. And that means no avoiding saying something because you think the other person won’t want to hear it--if something comes into your head, you have to just blurt it out.”

 

“Okay.” Tony stuffs a wad of pancake in his mouth. “I love you, Peter Parker.”

 

Peter flushes bright red, looks down at his lap. “I love you, too.”

 

Tony leans across the breakfast tray to kiss him, lips still sticky with syrup and coffee. Peter melts into it, melts at the feeling of Tony’s fingers sliding into his hair. This is...better than anything he ever could’ve thought to hope for. Better than the best. They drift closer, clutching each other, until the tray tilts dangerously, at which point Tony breaks away to set it on the floor, and presses Peter down into the mattress. Everything turns hot and breathless under the weight of him.

 

Minutes or hours later, Peter buries his face in Tony’s stomach, nuzzling the soft fabric of his worn t-shirt, and says, “Okay. You’re actually supposed to ask questions, though.”

 

“You told me to say whatever came into my head. Well--it came.”

 

“I’ll ask, then. How did you already know my face, when I took my mask off?”

 

Tony’s thumb brushes gently over the shell of Peter’s ear. “Remember when you got stabbed five times? That was a pretty distinctive injury. I got you off the hospital cameras.”

 

“Ugh,” Peter groans. “I knew I forgot something that day. But my brain was all scrambled.”

 

“Yeah, no shit. Why were you naked, by the way?”

 

“When? Just now?”

 

“Hilarious. No, when they brought you in for the stab wounds.”

 

Peter props his chin up on his forearms. “I had to ditch the suit. I didn’t exactly trust them not to unmask me, not when half the police force thinks I’m a criminal and the other half thinks I’m certifiable. Better to go in as an unidentified John Doe than Spider-Man.”

 

“Huh,” Tony huffs. “That’s pretty smart. So I’m guessing the blood--also Spider-Man?”

 

“Yeah. Radioactive spider DNA. Not super subtle.”

 

“I always did wonder why all my marks faded so quick.” He runs his knuckle over Peter’s eyebrow, then sinks his hand back in his hair. Peter lets his eyes fall closed, content to let Tony’s ministrations and the heavy weight of pancakes in his stomach lull him to doze. “I bet you wondered the opposite, huh? Why is this big fucking circle in the middle of my chest not going away?”

 

“Hmm,” Peter opens his eyes. “I wondered at first. Especially...there were a few hours when you didn’t get any other injuries. I thought you were...but then, what doesn’t kill you just makes it really tricky for me to wear bathing suits, right?”

 

Tony smiles fondly. “I don’t think that’s the saying.”

 

“I think it is.”

 

“Fair enough. I’ll allow it.” Tony’s stomach moves up and down evenly underneath Peter’s arms with the cadence of his breathing. “So all those bruises, after the spider bite...”

 

“Muggers, carjackers, bank robbers,” Peter mumbles. “Take your pick.”

 

“So you weren’t...”

 

“I wasn’t what? What did you...” Peter frowns, and pushes himself up so they’re eye-to-eye, close enough that he can take in the remnants of what looks like years of stress and guilt and concern in the lines of his soulmate’s face. “Did you think I was being abused?”

 

Tony doesn’t have to answer. “I wasn’t,” Peter assures him. “Those were just an occupational hazard, you know--being a superhero, and all. My aunt...she would never. Never.”

 

“Good,” Tony takes Peter’s head between his hands and kisses him, long and lingering. “I’m so glad you’re okay. I was so worried...for so many years, Pete. I wanted to help.”

 

Peter presses him down into the pillows. “Me, too. I wanted to take care of you.”

 

Tony wraps him up tight in his arms and rolls them so he’s on top, caging Peter in. Peter twists his hands in the back of Tony’s shirt and tries to pour everything he’s feeling into the kiss--every late night he spent on the fire escape prodding at the black circle on his chest, every time he noticed a new black burn on his hand or a cut on his forehead, every time he wished he could reach out and touch to make sure his soulmate was okay, and all he had as evidence of wellbeing were injuries.

 

They break apart, but stay close, sharing the same coffee-breath air. “Since we’re in Absolute Truth Time,” Tony murmurs. “Fess up. Who’s your favorite Avenger?”

 

Peter fights to keep a straight face. “Hawkeye.”

 

Tony opens his mouth indignantly, but before he can launch into the impassioned tirade that experience dictates must be coming, Peter says, “Kidding, kidding. You know it’s Steve.”

 

Tony snorts a laugh and drops his head into the pillows.

 

Smiling so wide his face hurts, Peter pulls him back around to kiss him again.

 


End file.
